How much do you need to make to afford a modest two-bedroom apartment in Clark County? It’s more than the area’s median wage of $20.32 an hour, and much more than the average renter’s wage, estimated at $13.95 per hour.
Clark County renters need to make $23.23 hourly, or $48,320 annually, to avoid spending more than 30 percent of their income on rent if living in a typical two-bedroom apartment, according to the Out of Reach 2016 report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition. At the time the report was written, the fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Clark County was $1,208 a month.
The report reveals a $9.28-an-hour discrepancy between what the average Clark County renter earns and the $23.23 an hour they’d need to make to comfortably afford a two-bedroom rental.
“That’s just the tip of the iceberg,” said Andy Silver, executive director of the Vancouver-based Council for the Homeless.
“People aren’t average. They range across a spectrum,” and many renters make less than $13.95 per hour, Silver said. It’s important to look at the careers available in the community, what they typically pay and whether that matches up with housing costs, he said.
Emergency situation
Silver is among those pushing for a proposed affordable housing tax that could appear on a future ballot. The Vancouver City Council, which declared an affordable housing emergency April 11, is expected to make a decision June 20 on whether to put the levy out for a public vote in November.
In 2014, there were 56,380 renter-occupied households in Clark County, an increase of about 19 percent from 2009, according to Census estimates. The number of owner-occupied households remained relatively flat during that period, hovering around 104,000. Silver believes the number of renters is on the rise and a greater percentage of locals are becoming renters as people struggle to buy homes. About 35 percent of Clark County households were renters in 2014.
“Nationally, there are more renter households than there have been since the early 1960s,” Silver said.
In Clark County, nearly 27 percent of households bring in less than $35,000 annually, according to the Census. The county also is one of the most expensive counties in the state to rent in, behind King and Snohomish counties, and Vancouver has some of the fastest-growing rents in the nation.
2½ full-time jobs
Rental housing in neighboring Skamania County, where there are about 1,200 renter households, requires the same $23.23 hourly wage for a two-bedroom rental, the report said. Our northern neighbor, Cowlitz County, is more affordable, requiring an hourly wage of $14.38 for a two-bedroom rental. There are an estimated 13,475 renter households in Cowlitz County, which is increasingly becoming a refuge for those priced out of Clark County.
Rent is also more affordable in Central and Eastern Washington. Spokane County renters, for instance, need to make $15.17 per hour to afford a two-bedroom apartment, the report said.
There is no state, county or metropolitan area in the country where a person working full time at the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour can afford a two-bedroom apartment at the fair market rent, which refers to the going rate for a private, nonsubsidized rental, the report said. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development uses fair market rents to determine the subsidies for rental assistance programs.
In Clark County, a person would have to work 2½ full-time jobs at the state minimum wage of $9.47 to afford fair market rent without subsidy.
Even in areas with a higher minimum wage, there’s still a shortfall, the housing report said. Seattle is gradually increasing its minimum wage to $15 per hour. This year, it rose to $13 hourly for workers at large companies and chains. However, the city’s housing wage is $23.56 an hour for a one-bedroom rental and $29.29 an hour for a two-bedroom.
Washington has the 10th-highest and Oregon the 18th-highest housing wage in the nation, which refers to the wage needed to pay for a rental without being cost-burdened. Households spending more than 30 percent of their income on rent and utilities are considered cost-burdened.
Leaving California
Many people moving to the Pacific Northwest are leaving the state that has the third-highest housing wage: California. Only Hawaii and the District of Columbia beat out the Golden State in terms of cost. The biggest percentage of newcomers in Washington hail from California. Seven of the top nine most expensive counties in the nation are in California, and five of the most expensive metropolitan areas are there, too.
Many West Coast cities are facing a shortage of affordable and available apartment units. The Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, Ore., area has 20 available and affordable apartment units for every 100 renters, according to The Affordable Housing Gap Analysis from the National Low Income Housing Coalition. The metropolitan area was considered No. 10 in a ranking of places with the lowest availability of rental units affordable to households at or below 30 percent of area median income, which is $21,900 annually. For those people, the Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro area has a deficit of 64,251 units, the report found.
Several California areas scored higher on the list, along with the metro areas surrounding Orlando, Fla., Las Vegas, Dallas, Phoenix and Tucson, Ariz.
The report shows that affordable housing is scarcer in the West than other regions of the country. Silver said there are many ways to tackle the deficit, including building more affordable housing and bolstering the amount of rental assistance vouchers that buy down existing units.
